Apple Store sales numbers keep analyst bullish for Q2

Apple will announce results for its fiscal second quarter next week, but …

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has put together sales estimates for Apple's recently ended fiscal second quarter. He and several colleagues visited a series of Apple Stores to gauge how many iPhones, iPods, and Macs the company is likely to have moved in the past three months. After crunching through the numbers, Munster sees a good outlook for Apple this past quarter.

Munster's analysis compares a current calculated average amount of sales of iPhones, Macs, and iPods to previous quarters' averages. While the averages themselves mean nothing—they don't take into account international sales, online sales, sales from resellers, etc.—comparing previous results with the respective quarterly results gives a model with at least some real-world results factored in.

Based on his model, iPhone sales are down about 15 percent from Q1. This is no surprise, given that iPhones build up demand before release, experience an explosion of sales, then slowly taper off until the next model comes out. The model suggests iPhone sales of about 3.7 million, better than the Street's 3.3 million projection. Munster, being a betting man, believes international sales could push the number as high as 4.4 million.

Macs are selling more briskly than originally expected, likely due to the recent desktop refresh. Munster predicts a 2.2 million Mac quarter, slightly above consensus. iPods were selling at about double the rate of iPhones based on sales checks. Though there is no previous data collected on iPod sales to compare, Munster is playing it safe and estimating 10 million sold for the quarter—in line with other estimates.

With the downturn in the economy, projections were way down for Apple's post-holiday quarter. Despite the company's reluctance to drastically lower prices, Munster's projections suggest a good overall quarter for the company. If Apple can hold the line until the economy brightens, it could be poised well for further growth.

4 Reader Comments

I now think that Ars wants me to post "first" here... With the comment above saying: There are no comments yet! You could be the first...

Oh well, back to the subject at hand.

I'm not sure how his methodology is really going to help him see overall sales... I mean if he is unlucky, and went to the stores on days that were seeing more sales because of statisctical abnormalities, doesn't that throw all his data out the window?

Of course if he has sales data for many days, that would reduce the abnormalities, but it's definitly not something to bet on (IMHO)

Originally posted by AirsoftSnake:I'm not sure how his methodology is really going to help him see overall sales... I mean if he is unlucky, and went to the stores on days that were seeing more sales because of statisctical abnormalities, doesn't that throw all his data out the window?

Of course if he has sales data for many days, that would reduce the abnormalities, but it's definitly not something to bet on (IMHO)

The basic idea behind this (as with other kinds of mathematical predictions) is to come up with factors to build a mathematical model that fits historical data. Then the model can be assumed to predict future performance based on the given factors.

I agree that the data gathering leaves much to be desired... I think sales would need to be sampled over different times of day, different days of the week, etc, to get a better average. But Munster correlates previous averages with reported quarterly sales to make a slightly more educated guess than, presumably, analysts that don't use similar data.

No matter what Apple announces, the analysts who bag on Apple will say it's not enough and the ones who love Apple will say it's great. Both sets will twist whatever numbers are made available to fit their preconceived narrative.